George Miller Sternberg

Brigadier General George Miller Sternberg (June 8, 1838 – November 3, 1915) was a U.S. Army physician who is considered to have been the first bacteriologist in the United States. He was the 18th U.S. Army Surgeon General from 1893 to 1902. Pioneering German bacteriologist Robert Koch honored him with the sobriquet, "Father of American Bacteriology".

Sternberg was promoted to captain on May 28, 1866 and was soon sent to Fort Riley, Kansas (December 1867). With troops from this post he took part (1868-69) in several expeditions against hostile Cheyenne Indians along the upper Arkansas River in Indian Territory and in western Kansas. Besides his military duties, Sternberg was also interested in fossils and began collecting leaf imprints from the nearby Dakota Sandstone Formation. Some of his specimens went back East where they were studied by the famous paleobotanist, Leo Lesquereux.

Sternberg served at Fort Riley until July 1870, when be was ordered to Governors Island, New York. In the meantime, he had remarried on September 1, 1869, at Indianapolis, Indiana, to Martha L. Pattison, a daughter of Thomas T. N. Pattison of that city.